Finding our personal motivation is very important. Our motivations are really our values and these values are essentially the most important things in our lives. These values are very important because they are the underlying motivating factors of our lives. You can say that they are sort of like our guiding principles that point us in the direction that we want to go and also set the standard of how we’re going to get there.

Finding out what your motivations are, will greatly increase your personal focus in life. This personal focus will allow you to develop greater personal happiness because our happiness is really based on our ability to successfully implement our values in our lives. Knowing your personal motivating factors is also very important because it makes choices far easier. By knowing what motivates you and therefore what is really important to you, you are able to make choices far easier because you are more aware of where you want to go.

A good way to find out what motivates you is by asking yourself the following questions:

If I could have anything I wanted in life right now, what would I have?

If I was living my ideal life right now, what would I be doing?

What does success mean to me? What does success mean to me personally (not to friends, family or society at large but to me personally)?

What one thing would make me completely happy?

If I was able to do it all again, knowing what I know now, what would I do differently?

By answering these questions honestly you will discover what really is important to you. Always remember to answer the above questions honestly, discovering for yourself what you truly want and not what the rest of the world wants from you. It is very important that you find the personal distinction between your personal motivation and the motive forces of the world around you. What I mean by this is that you must identify your personal values and separate those from the desires of those around you. There is a difference between what you want and what the world wants from you, the sooner that you can discover your own personal motivations, the sooner that you can start living your own life. Use these questions to find your inner values and in this way the true source of your ‘personal’ happiness.

Time is a very precious thing. We are only given so much time on this Earth so its always a good idea to make sure that you are spending your time wisely. It is also possible that others could rob you of time if you are not careful and discerning as to how and with whom you want to spend this precious resource.

The most important thing that you can do to stop wasting this precious resource is to develop a greater sense of self-worth. Self-worth might not be directly related to time and time management but it is actually a characteristic that is crucial and being able to discern how to spend your time wisely. There are many people that will demand your time but there are a few people that are worthy of the time to you have to give. You need to have a strong sense of character in order to stop this waste of your resource, you need to realize that you are important enough to decide for yourself how you wish to spend your time.

Without strength of character, you will not have the courage and the will power to be able to tell others to leave you alone. This strength of character is developed through your own understanding of your personal self-worth. Understand therefore that you are a special person and that what you do in this life matters, that you do have a purpose just like everyone else on this planet and that you are born as a free human being with the right to choose how and in which way you will use your time.

When you feel that someone is taking your attention away from things that you consider to be true priorities, you need to have the courage to tell them that they are wasting your time and that you have no time for them right now. There is no need to be rude but there are times when you need to be frank about your feelings so that others have a clear understanding of where you’re coming from. With a well-developed sense of self-worth, you will not suppress feelings that are telling you that you could use your time more wisely.

Self-worth is also the developer of that strength of character that you need in order to stay focused on achieving whatever goal or objective you have. This strength of character is needed in order to realize that you have to stick to it if you want to succeed. Sometimes we purposefully distract ourselves from our objectives because we don’t believe that we are strong enough or worthy enough to achieve them. Make sure that you understand that you are a strong and worthy person and that you are entitled to all the good things in the world, and that you are also capable of attaining anything that you want.

If you’re having trouble figuring out whether what you are about to do will be a waste of your time, ask yourself the following four questions:

Does what I’m about to do fit in to my final objective(s)?

What are the benefits of me spending time in this way and on this issue?

What will it cost me if I spend time on this?

Is this something I feel like doing right now?

These are very good questions in determining whether what you are about to do is worthy of the cost. This cost is your time and this time is very precious because as I have said you only have so much of it. You can’t afford to lose any of it on something that you don’t want to do or that is not part of your overall objectives in life.

I am certain that you have all felt negative energy in the past. This negative energy can be the result of your own personal beliefs or the result of the beliefs and intentions of the people around you. Negative energy can be felt in different ways; some people for example feel certain physical symptoms like tenseness or low blood pressure, many feel negative energy as emotions, either feeling depressed, scared, or angry. Often times people that feel negative energies as emotions believe that they are the ones who are feeling angry or scared for some reason, while in fact these are emotions that have been projected upon them. Some people experience negative energy by being flooded with negative thoughts, thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere and tend to be very negative in nature. When these feelings seem to just materialize out of nowhere, you must realize that it is quite possible that these emotions, thoughts, and physical symptoms can be the result of external projections; negative energy that others are feeling and that you are picking up on.

In past articles I have given you ways to neutralize negative energy. I have also given you some basic reasons as to why this negative energy is present within you. In this article I want to get even more specific as to the source of these negative feelings and also I want to discuss how to stop them so that you have a set of techniques to be able to eventually neutralize them permanently.

In order to begin you must realize that all negative energy, whether it’s yours or external, is caused by your personal beliefs. While it might seem that external negative influences are beyond your control, this is not the case. You can stop these negative emotions by realizing what beliefs you have that are leading you feel these external projections so strongly. It is quite possible to be able to feel these external projections and be completely unaffected by them at the same time. You can do this by becoming more aware of your internal feelings and beliefs and in this way begin to understand the energies that surround you. An understanding of your beliefs will allow you to control your personal reality and expand your awareness by realizing that these are not your personal feelings but the feelings of those around you.

To begin you must be willing to explore the negative feelings that you are having instead of trying to suppress them. This can be a difficult thing at first and perhaps something that you might not want to try in certain situations; for example it might be easier for you to ride the wave as it were during critical times, when you need to be at your best and you need to focus more on the moment. There will be times though when you will be able to explore these negative feelings, and this is the time when you must not suppress these negative feelings or ride through them, but let yourself experience them fully. In this way you will be able to discover what these feelings and thoughts are trying to tell you about your beliefs.

For example let’s say that while you are riding a bus you are struck by an incredible feeling of fear. If you are able, it is better that you let yourself experience this emotion completely. By allowing this emotion to have complete and free reign, you are able to use it as a natural impetus to find why you are feeling this way.

While you are feeling these emotions pay close attention to the kind of thoughts that you are having. These are great clues as to what is causing this emotion. Also ask yourself why you are feeling what you’re feeling, question yourself and look into your psyche to find the reason for your emotional outburst. By feeling your emotions, following them, and questioning yourself, you will eventually be able to realize the belief behind this emotion. For example it could be that you believe that people are dangerous and that you should always be careful and stay on your toes around them. This belief might even hide deeper beliefs about what you think people are generally and this this might lead to a discovery of all sorts of other personal beliefs about the human species in general.

It is also possible that as you feel this fear and follow the thoughts and emotions that present themselves that you discover thoughts and explore possible future circumstances that seemed quite alien to you. For example you might see thoughts of the bus crashing and perhaps even very specific thoughts having to do with taking care of children or being responsible for another person. If as you explore these thoughts you get a very good sense that these thoughts are alien, because maybe you have absolutely no fear and no beliefs about the dangers of public transportation, then you can begin to realize that these are external projections and that you are essentially picking up on the thoughts and emotions of others. By discovering your beliefs you become very aware of your own self and your own beliefs. You can in this way either discover what beliefs you have that are causing these negative emotions or discover the fact that you are indeed feeling external projections from others. Discovering these beliefs can be a very monumental thing for you. It can be sort of like having a eureka moment where a great revelation has been made to you.

You must explore these beliefs in a logical manner and figure out if these beliefs are fundamentally positive or negative to you personally. You do this by asking yourself if this belief has a positive purpose. There are beliefs that might cause us to feel what we consider negative emotions but that are in reality quite constructive. For example it could be the case that you have a fear of public transportation because the public transportation in your area is quite unsafe and a belief in the fact that it is unsafe is actually helping you become aware and be prepared for a possibly dangerous situation. It can also be the case that this belief is actually old and is something that you should now learn to get over. For example it could be that you are scared of public transportation because as a child you experienced a traumatic situation and from that point believed that all public transportation was unsafe, as an adult you must get over this belief because in many ways it might no longer be applicable.

Personal beliefs can be quite complex like this or they can be quite simple. It is up to you to discover the nuances of your personal life and your individual beliefs. If you are dedicated enough you can discover these beliefs and trace them deeply into your psyche which will allow you to experience incredibly powerful personal revelations.

If you discover that these beliefs are no longer applicable and that they are serving no purpose at all, that they are just providing negative energy and therefore are just a hindrance, you must then take action to change this belief so that you are able to stop negative energy from manifesting in your life. There are a number of ways that you can do this and I will give you the three that are the best in my opinion. Experiment with these and see which works best for you.

1. The first method to change a belief is to use good old-fashioned logic. I personally like this method for changing beliefs the best because it is very straightforward and if you have a logical mind, it can become a very powerful way to get rid of unwanted beliefs and to change them to beliefs that are more constructive to you personally. In the logical method what you are trying to do is to have an honest discussion with yourself. Having discovered your beliefs you logically ask yourself if this belief is constructive. You break down the reasons why this belief is or is not constructive and you realize in a fully conscious way that this certain belief must go. You then come to logical conclusions as to what beliefs would be better suited in your new situation. You tell yourself that you have the power to change these beliefs as easily as you can move books on a shelf. Through this personal realization you can tell yourself in a bold and firm manner that the old negative belief is illogical and that this new belief is truly the correct one. Through this action alone you can eliminate old beliefs by making old negative beliefs illogical and replacing them with far more logical and constructive beliefs.

2. Another way to change your beliefs is through affirmation. If you have realized what your beliefs are and you have surmised that this is a negative belief that you want to change, you have done a great deal of the logical work that is involved in changing a belief. It is possible though that you might want to use a stronger technique because of the intensity of this negative belief, which might be old and therefore deeply rooted in your psyche. Affirmation is definitely a stronger method and one that is very good at changing beliefs and old neurological patterns of thought. In order to use this method effectively I suggest that you come up with a positive phrase that concisely states your new belief. For example a new belief affirmation phrase could be, “I believe that public transportation is safe and secure. I believe that people are good at heart and always have my best interest in mind.” This simple pair of statements can begin to alter your beliefs and change your neurological patterns if it is done correctly. If you would like to learn more about affirmations I suggest that you read the article,”What is Affrimation?”.

3. The final method that I’m going to tell you about, that can be very powerful indeed at changing belief systems, is the method of ‘unbending intention’. In this method you use a form of concentrated effort into a particular intention. How this works is that you pretend for of 5 to 10 minutes that a certain thing is true. In order to perform this technique effectively I suggest that you find a nice quiet place where you will not be disturbed and in this place begin to realize that your intentions at this moment can change future beliefs and therefore can even change future outcomes.

Focused intention on a particular belief can begin to neurologically pattern that beliefs into your mind and as a result begin to create new external probabilities. For example you could focus your mind completely on the above affirmation and for 5 to 10 minutes, using all your effort, make yourself believe with every cell of your being that this statement is true right now. Making yourself believe that this statement is true can be quite taxing and there is no big need to do it for more than 5 minutes or so.

Done correctly the method of unbending intention can change an old belief into a new one in very short order. It’s possible that you might perform this technique once and get results almost instantly. It is also the case you might need to do this technique for longer periods of time, perhaps once a day for a week. The most likely scenario though is that you will need to do this technique once forget about it for a week or so and then repeat it again. You must find your own frequency by exploring your feelings and determining if work on your new belief requires a little more effort. The best way to do this techniques though is to perform it and then try and forget about it as much as possible until you feel that you need to do it again.

How you know that any of these three methods are successful is by how they change your feelings and thoughts. These methods should change your beliefs and therefore change how you feel; they will change the thoughts that you have about certain situations. If old emotions come back, you must again go through the process of identifying what beliefs are causing these emotions. Keeping yourself vigilant in this way you can continually explore your own psyche and determine what course of action you need to follow in order to create the kind of beliefs that will empower you in the future. These empowering beliefs should allow you to stop feeling the negative energy that you had been feeling in the past, completely eliminating your old anxieties.

As I had told you before it is quite possible that some of the negative energy that you perceive is external and has nothing to do with you but is actually the result of projected negative energy which you have picked up on. By understanding your beliefs you can do one of two major things; you can change your beliefs so that you do not have to experience this negative energy and therefore you do not have to experience the negative trauma, or you can learn to be far more aware of these external influences and the power of your own telepathic ability. In this way working on your beliefs can indeed stop the influence of negative energy permanently. It is up to you to decide what you want and how you want to progress in your life. A good affirmation to work with in either case is, “ I only respond to positive influences.”

Beliefs then are the causes of all this negative internal and external energy that you feel. I have given you a good technique on how to discovered these beliefs. I have also given you three very powerful ways that you can use to change these beliefs so that you can let go of old ones and replace them with new beliefs there are far more empowering and suit your purposes better. I hope that with this knowledge you will be able to empower yourself, following your own path into a happier future. You can either stop negative energy permanently, so that you are no longer aware of even external influences, or you can discover new ways to expand your untapped conscious potential.

We have all heard of the positivity movement. This is the movement that tells us that in order to better our lives we must try to stay as happy as possible. With good intentions they expound the idea that happiness is the key to greater happiness. What is meant by this is that they believe that you should try and suppress your negative emotions while at the same time trying to express as much positive emotion as possible.

As I said, this is a well-meaning group, that tells you that the best way to be happy is to fake it until you make it. Generally this movement believes that positive emotion and positive thoughts create positive outcome. Some of these groups also believe that by creating more positive emotion you can also create greater material abundance, that positive thought and happy feelings are responsible for material abundance.

While I do agree with the proposition that thought creates reality, I definitely do not believe in this positivity movement. The reason for this is that this movement would have you squelch any negative emotion that you might have as soon as possible. While some of their techniques are good at redirecting and refocusing your thoughts; suppressing emotion in general is a very dangerous prospect. When emotions are not allowed to have their full reign, they do tend to grow in power. While suppression of these emotions might stop them for a while, they will resurface again in the future and when they do resurface they tend to be far stronger. Emotions are there to show us our beliefs, if we do not use these emotions in the right way and discover what beliefs are causing them, we will find other ways to try and confront the source of our problems.

My contention with the positivity movement, which is directly related to what I stated above, has to do with the fact that its precepts do not allow for conscious development. This movement tends to expound the idea that human development is attained through material success and material wealth. That the ego is all powerful and must be maintained within a small rigid set of boundaries. I have noticed that some of these groups even try to stifle any kind of empathic abilities that the ego might have, believing that these empathic abilities will only allow negative thoughts to enter a person’s mind. Since these negative thoughts must be avoided at all cost, any negative emotions that you might have while identifying with others are censored at all cost as well.

My assertion has always been that while thoughts do create reality, thoughts are created by what we believe. Emotions are there to show us these beliefs and allow us to examine them closely and change these beliefs when they are not suiting our purposes. More importantly I believe that our purpose in this life is not material gain but consciousness expansion. This consciousness expansion can only be achieved if we allow ourselves to experience our complete selves, which includes the full range of emotional feelings. By experiencing our feelings as fully and as completely as possible, we can begin to realize our place in the universe and our greater spiritual reality.

Achieving material success is a positive thing because this material world is here to show us how to manipulate our consciousness. If we do create our external world with our thoughts then the external world is sort of like a feedback mechanism that shows us what we are doing right and wrong by materializing everything that we project through our psyche. As such material wealth and happiness are true and worthy goals. If these goals are pursued properly they can lead us to great consciousness expansion and spiritual understanding in their own way. Material success though is only the beginning and there is a point where we must grow beyond our mere desire for material abundance and begin to search for more spiritual abundance. This spiritual abundance is really an expansion of our consciousness into our inner reality, where all physical creation happens and where the source of our lives becomes apparent. From a spiritual abundance standpoint, material possession can be seen as a good beginning but a VERY limiting one if we focus solely on it.

Do not follow any movement or belief system that tells you that you must hold onto only certain thoughts and emotions and to quell all others that do not fit within a certain parameter. Question any belief system that tells you that empathy and empathic understanding is bad for your being. Question any notions that tell you that you must suppress any part of yourself. Realize that these belief systems are very old and that they are based on the basic premise; that by doing a certain positive thing you will get a reward, but that if you do certain negative things you will be punished. This belief system is no longer functional in our evolving society, it is based on a limited egotistical belief which can be directly traced to a limited understanding of the complexity of consciousness. The reverse is also true of course, you should not follow any belief system that tells you that annihilation of the ego is the answer. The answer is an expansion of the ego where it is able to process far more external and internal data and as a result grow and become far more flexible in its nature. This egotistical growth cannot be possible through suppression. Learn to become more yourself and grow in all ways.

Empathy is an incredibly powerful tool. It is the ability to see from the perspective of the other and in this way to be able to experience, to a greater or lesser degree, what the other is experiencing. Some would have you believe that empathy is dangerous and that it can cloud your ability to function correctly. This fear is expounded because there’s a belief that the ego, or your personal self, will become completely overwhelmed by what you feel while you are experiencing things from the other perspective.

Science tells us that empathic ability is impossible. That at best empathy is just a form of very creative imagining and that this kind of information could not be substantiated and therefore it is mostly useless. Science uses experiment, and logic to be able to arrive at its conclusions. While its methodology, when done and performed correctly, is very powerful and illuminating, it is not as powerful as the human ability to sense through great empathic ability. Logical deduction and induction can never compare to the direct knowledge that is available to anyone who is able to project his or her consciousness into the other and in that way access information directly from the source.

Logical deduction or induction is achieved through stationary consciousness. What this means is that the self (or the ego) looks from within its shell into the outer world and uses different techniques in logical processing to try and come up with new information. Experimentation through trial and error can then prove or disprove these logical hypotheses. Empathic understanding on the other hand is made possible by an expansion of the self (or the ego), by sending forth a part of self that is able to become one with the object of its scrutiny. The person doing this empathic expansion is then able to perceive his or her own ego while at the same time he or she is able to experience the other as well.

Empathic awareness is far more dynamic and vital than current accepted methods of external perception. It naturally involves the imagination and combines these imaginative thoughts and directly experienced feelings in order to give you a very clear picture of the perceptions of the other. Through these perceptions you are able to directly become aware of data that could not be attained through logical deduction or induction. This gathered data could also be experimented upon so that fine scrutiny of the data could be made. Unfortunately since this type of information gathering is seen as unreliable, impossible, and dangerous, we are all segregated from this incredible human tool.

Empathic understanding and awareness is perhaps one of the strongest information gathering tools that we have as humans. Einstein did not discover and formulate his great ideas through logical induction or deduction, he used empathic intuition and in this way was able to directly perceive the nature of the photon. His mathematical work later confirmed his theories but it was in no way responsible for discovering these theories. Empathy is a great tool that is at your disposal, learn to use it and you will discover an entire universe that had been hidden from you until now.

If you want to discover a little more about empathy and empathic awareness I suggest you read the article entitled, “Empathy.”

Believe it or not we are all constantly lying to ourselves. We all pretend to ourselves that we did not see a certain thing or that we did not experience this or that. It is amazing how powerful our minds are at being able to completely ignore certain data in order to make us feel better.

The first big reason why we lie to ourselves is that we are trying to avoid pain. Quite often when we do not want to experience a negative feeling, we will often overlook internal thoughts and external sense data. This is actually a great coping mechanism that allows people in very stressful and traumatic situations to pool their resources by focusing completely on just trying to survive. This is similar to the mammalian diving response where the body reduces the amount of blood to the extremities and focuses most of the blood in the heart and the brain. This is also done by the awareness; when something becomes too traumatic and too hard to deal with, consciousness removes its awareness from them in order to focus itself completely on trying to survive the situation. Just like the mammalian diving response, this conscious response is there for good reasons and is very useful under certain extreme conditions.

Unfortunately this conscious response is not always the best response in all situations. In order to overcome and to become stronger, you must be strong enough to face any situation. We lie to ourselves when we believe that we are not conscious of certain things. This relates directly to the second reason why we usually lie to ourselves; the belief that most of our awareness is based in the subconscious and that we have little power over our perceptions and actions. This is not the case since our entire perception is conscious and we have access to any information that we want. The problem is that we have not taken the time to train ourselves to be fully aware of our conscious thoughts and feelings.

The best way to begin to stop lying to yourself is to become more and more aware of your conscious awareness. You do this by strengthening your attention and focusing this attention on your conscious mind. It is possible to perform any daily task and still pay attention to the thoughts and feelings that you are having at the time. Since most people do not make this a priority, they take it for granted that this is not possible and that there is no benefit in doing this. It is very possible to develop the type of attention required, and it is also a very beneficial. The great benefit is obviously the fact that you stop lying to yourself, by realizing that you are far more aware than you think.

With this increase in awareness, you can start to take responsibility for whatever action you take. In this way you also overcome a very powerful lie, this lie has you believing that you have no control over the circumstances that you face. By being more aware of your internal conscious world, you realize that your internal perceptions allow you to know ahead of time what a certain course of actions will create. So if you believe that bad stuff happens to you all the time for no reason, please then realized that through the conscious awareness that I speak of, you can become very aware of why these bad situations are happening and therefore discover ways to stop them.

To stop lying to yourself means that you see life as a challenge and not as something that is done on to you. Perhaps the hardest thing that we can do in our lives is to be honest with ourselves. To be honest with yourself might seem like the hard road but it is the only road that leads to self growth and greater personal awareness. This greater awareness is the key to a more fulfilling life and in my opinion it is the only road worth taking. Stop lying to yourself and grow in all ways.

There are often times when we want to change something about ourselves or our environment. Change, if it is positive, is a good thing because it means that we are growing and expanding ourselves. Changes also a way of keeping things fresh and making life less dreary. Change is also needed when life becomes difficult and you need to change something in order to make things easier again. Quite often change means an alteration or a modification of a bad habit so that we are able to prosper instead of be consumed by a habit that is negative.

In order to successfully make any modification in ourselves, we must make sure that we have the correct strategy. Change can either be hard or difficult, it greatly depends on how we go about it. In order to have an easier time with any personal modification, always make sure that you take the seven key components into close consideration:

Clear goal or objective; make sure that before you make any kind of change you make this goal or project as specific and as clear as possible. The more specific that you are the easier that it will be to meet your objectives.

Research; before you begin it is always a good idea to do as much research as possible on your intended goal. Here is where you find out what you need to achieve in order to make the changes that you want.

Action; before you begin you must also find out exactly what you need to do make this change possible.

Accountability; besides yourself, it is always a good idea to have someone else be witness to your efforts. If you can, tell a friend or a relative about your intentions, in this way you increase your personal motivation and you have a witness that can give you feedback on any successes or failures along the way. Make sure therefore that this person has your best interest in mind.

Feedback and modify; change takes time and as you progress during your modifying efforts, make sure that you routinely take time to check your progress and see how you are doing. You must do this on a regular basis because it is quite easy to get off track and the sooner that you realize this misalignment, the easier that it will be to correct any mistakes. This is the time when you must look at your progress and ask yourself, is there anything that you need to change in order to make this goal more achievable?

Point of triumph; this is your 18th hole. This is the place that you reach where you will know that you have achieved the goal that you have set for yourself. This is a very important point because it’s the one that will let you know when you have made the kind of change that you intended. You must make this point of triumph as specific as possible so that it is very clear when you reach it.

A final point that I will mention and one that I highly recommend is that you reward your achievements. One way to do this is to make sure that you fully emotionally appreciate the accomplishment that you have made. Appreciation and strong emotional recognition of your accomplishments can be an incredibly powerful way to motivate yourself to make more change in the future and to make sure that the change that you have made is more permanent. You can also if you want treat yourself to a fine little reward as an appreciation for your find success. A treat like this can be a motivator and also a fine way to get you really excited about the possibility of change, and finally about your success in accomplishing your goal. Change can either be hard or easy, in order to make it easier and far more successful make sure that you keep the above key points in mind.

Happiness cannot be found through exterior circumstance. Happiness is something that we all search for, this is perhaps because when we are feeling happy it usually means that everything is going our way. Feeling good after all feels good. The positivity movement tells us that we should be happy all day all the time, but is this really a good thing? The reality of the situation is that if you try to make yourself happy when you’re really feeling sad, you are suppressing emotion and this can be very dangerous. Stifled emotion can create all sorts of psychological and physical problems.

Happiness can be found through friends, things, situations, and family. Sadness and anger can also be found through friends, things, situations, and family. Happiness is also not the be all and end all of life, and while happiness and good feeling can make life much easier, it is a bad thing to think that these emotions are the only cause of external abundance. Anyone that is telling you that you should be happy all the time and every day is really telling you that you should become half yourself and this is no way to live life, no matter how much abundance and wealth you think you might get as a result.

If emotions are created by thoughts and thoughts create reality then you must realize that thoughts are created because of belief systems. In order to create more personal happiness, which is a natural result of having a better life situation, you have to begin to understand what your beliefs about life are. Many believe that the external world is responsible for happiness, others believe that you have to fake happiness to make happiness; true happiness though can only be achieved through internal understanding. While external things can allow us to see how we feel about certain things and therefore tell us about our beliefs, the only way to change these beliefs and understand them is through internal contemplation.

Generally speaking if you are not a very happy person, it is most likely the case that you have to make some large changes in what you believe life is. A great way to change these general concepts about life is to realize that you are a mortal being, that you are going to die. Even though this might seem a bit morbid, it is nonetheless a great way to motivate yourself into a better understanding of your life experience. By realizing that this moment can literally be your last moment, after all you must appreciate the fact that death can come at any time anywhere, you can begin to truly appreciate the preciousness of your present reality. By understanding your own mortality you begin to ‘juice life’ and stop taking so much for granted. An understanding of your own mortality is also a great way to get over the pettiness that you might feel. Nothing is better at letting you know that what you do matters than death.

It is my belief that only through the realization of your impending death can you truly begin to experience happiness. It is a funny juxtaposition really in that this realization of your own mortality allows you to feel both frailty and great strength. While in the one hand you feel just how frail your position is on this Earth and how many things can take it away, the awareness of your personal death also allows you to re-channel your energies so that you finally begin to experience life as a fully awake and strong individual. Happiness therefore is an internal quest and must be balanced through the understanding that while happiness is something that you must aspire to, you must also allow all your emotions to have their time.

Someone once told me that we do not choose our friends but that the universe chooses them for us. I found this statement to be very intriguing and the more that I thought about it the more that I realized that this is only the case on the surface but that there is far more going on in a spiritual level. I think that while the universe does indeed seem to choose our friends, we are actually the ones that choose them. We choose them by how we relate to the universe; this is done through our beliefs, thoughts, and actions.

My amendment indicates my belief that we are not living powerless lives, but that we actually choose and then wait to receive from the world at large. Since I do believe that we have the power to choose our reality, I also believe that we have the power to choose our friends.

Friends can be our greatest resource or they can be our greatest hindrance. If we are surrounded by supposed friends that treat us terribly and bring down our energy, then our lives suffer. On the other hand if we are surrounded by friends that uplift our spirits, encourage us, and give us energy; we are bound to do very well in everything that we do. I believe therefore that it is very important that we choose the correct friends because it is through their help that we shall either fail or succeed in most of our endeavors.

I suggest that you take the time to examine all your friendships. You should look at all the relations that you have and examine how they make you feel. A good way to do this is to find a quiet environment and to imaginatively visualize your friend in question before you. As you imagine your friend before you, how do you feel? Do you have sudden visions of past interactions? Were these good or bad times?

You should do this with all the friends that you have and deeply examine your feelings. If you do have friends in your life that make you feel drained or upset, then you must honestly question this relationship. It can be a very difficult thing but there are times when you need to distance yourself from people that bring you down. Truthful examination of your relationships will let you know, through your feelings, what these relationships are doing to you and your life. Any individual that is taking away more than he’s getting back, must be sent packing. This might sound harsh but this is your life and if you only get one chance around, it is better spent with those that truly care about you.

This exercise might really cut down on the amount of friends that you do have, but the benefits of letting go of the negative people in your life is well worth the effort. Now by negative I do not mean strictly negative, and that you should get rid of friends just because they speak negative things all the time. Some of the best friends that I have had have been these great negative types that have made me laugh for hours at a time. Comedy after all is negativity with a twist. The kind of negative friendships that I am talking about are those that are actually causing destruction in your life. You can identify these negative friendships because they do not make you happy or tell you great jokes but because they make you feel drained and powerless. You must look within yourself and question the feelings that you are having in those relationships because you are the only person that can make those very important subjective decisions.

Learn to be strong and let go of bad friendships. Being alone is not a bad thing as it is a wonderful time to grow as an individual and to discover your inner life. Be strong enough to only maintain those relationships that bring you joy and happiness, those relationships that uplift your spirit and make you feel like you could do anything. We have all had friends that make us feel this way and they are worth their weight in gold.

We are all told in one way or another, from the beginning of our lives, that life is competition. Whenever you look around it seems that we have to compete and fight for everything that we want. Science tells us that evolution, which is the fundamental law of life, is competition. But is this true? Or perhaps a better question is; is competition the best way to win in life?

As a child growing up you were most likely put in competitive situations early on. Whether you were fighting for crayons with a sibling or whether you were engaged in some kind of little league sport, you were seemingly competing from the cradle. This early competition is usually a type of head-on frontal assault where we engage our rivals in a face-to-face confrontation. While this might be great strategy as a child, simple and straightforward and seemingly quite natural, as you grow up it become obvious that this strategy can sometimes be quite self-defeating. The reason for this is that as we grow we find that head-on competition is too simplistic to win many battles. Indeed it could be said that if you’re openly competing with anyone, you most likely have a fifty-fifty chance of winning at best. The reason for this is that advanced strategy always tells us that subterfuge and disguise are what truly win battles. Open engagement means that you failed to position yourself properly in the field and now you are facing head to head battle. This happens because you were not smart enough to get what you wanted through advanced thinking. Seen in this way, competition can be seen as poor choice of action.

While the above paragraph might allow many to see that competition, at least head to head competition, is bad strategy and therefore not worth the effort; you must realize that nature does not really compete. While many evolutionary biologists might think that I speak sacrilege, from a spiritualistic point of view, you realize that nature never competes, it just flows. While looking at nature from the surface it might seem that it’s all fang and claw out there, but higher metaphysical concepts take it for granted that there’s much more going on at a spiritual level. What is meant by this is that while through physical eyes we only see the final outcome, before this outcome came to fruition there were many internal choices that were made. For example, the lion did not catch and eat the zebra because in a competitive environment he was better than the zebra and other predatory competitors; that certain lion killed and ate that certain zebra because nature made a choice that involved balance and a grand cooperative venture between every single creature in the savanna, and the world. Nature balances itself by creating this incredible dynamic that feeds and grows from itself. The lion is not just one single individual fighting against the entire world, he is one small part of a great whole that works together in an infinite flow of life and death. There was no competition therefore, there was only choices, made by a greater whole. The problem for us is that our physical senses were only able to see the seemingly torturous final outcome.

While animals follow instinct and the dictates of nature perfectly, men do have the ability to consciously choose. This might sometimes make you feel like you are one individual against the world, but you must realize that you too are part of this whole and that while you do have complete freedom of choice you are also supported by an incredible natural environment that does not compete. Looked at this way, you can see that when you do compete you are actually not going about things in the right way. Conflict then is the final results of the accumulation of prior choices. If you find yourself in a face-to-face struggle with someone then, you must realize that you got there through a number of choices that you made before the situation became real physically.

A better way to go through life then is not through competition but by allowing yourself to flow just like nature. In order to do this you must learn to relax into life. Try to get over your fight or flight feelings and realize that often these feelings are there because of a belief. This belief is the one that tells you that life is struggle and that everyone is out to get what you have. Learn to feel at ease with others. Most importantly realize that it will always be better to create than to compete. You create by choosing what to believe and focusing on what you want; letting life naturally take you into the best circumstances possible. In this way, getting what you want is as easy as plucking an apple from a tree.

Disclaimer - The information contained on this Website is solely for educational and entertainment purposes on the given subjects. It should not be considered medical advice nor financial advice and should NOT be used as a substitute for medical advice or financial advice by trained professionals.

The author makes no warranty or assumes any responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information given. Moreover, the author accepts no responsibility for the decisions made by the reader.